Elementary: Ain’t Nothing like the Real Thing Recap

Synopsis for 4×21: Joan continues her tedious quest to investigate Moreland Holmes and NYPD responds to a car jacking that isn’t at all what it seems.

Rating: ★★★★★

Joan checked in with Eugene, the medical examiner, at the beginning of the episode. We hadn’t seen him since he told Sherlock he was going on a sabbatical to begin working through what he’d experienced when the bomb went off in the morgue.

Apparently he’d taken up comedy as a hobby, and though his show was pretty terrible, he seemed happy. He and Joan talked about Sherlock and his new girlfriend, Fiona, before Joan had to sneak off to meet with her mole in Moreland’s agency. It turned out the mole had found some transactions between Moreland and some officials in Russia, trying to track down and escaped convict before the authorities had a chance to find them.

A purse snatcher ran straight into a crime scene while being pursued by the police and immediately stopped and admitted that though he’d stolen the purse, he didn’t have anything to do with the scene they’d found. It appeared to be a car jacking gone wrong. A man lay dead, shot in the head, in the driver’s seat while another holding the gun that was used was dead on the ground. Sherlock and Joan were pulled into the case (a distraction from Sherlock’s issue of trying to find a home for a cat he’d purchased for Fiona).

They found a camera at the scene that had been thrown away, but still had some pictures of the man who was dead in the car, a fellow by the name of Jared. His body was in a different position in the pictures than it had been at the scene, meaning his body was moved, or there was something weird about the pictures. After they ID’ed both victims, Jared and then the man on the ground, Butch, they turned to their family and friends to try and solve the mystery.

They went to Jared’s business partner first, who claimed to know nothing about it. He had an alibi and everything, and claimed to have no motive. The only enemies he could think of would have been the state of New York, because they were suing over their inability to frack on some land they had purchased. The only argument they had was over a recently purchased lot that Jared had wanted to sell, and his partner had wanted to keep.

When they looked into Butch’s apartment, they found multiple bloody shirts with fake blood on them in the garbage. His girlfriend claimed she didn’t know anything. It came to light that the two had tried to stage Jared’s death, but in the middle of staging it, they both got murdered. Talking to Jared’s wife got them nowhere, as she claimed the only one who had any sort of motive was his business partner whom already had a legitimate alibi.

Joan met her mole in public, and he insisted that Moreland was onto them, and that he wasn’t going to be able to do it anymore. Joan was a little less than sympathetic.

The day of the murders, Jared’s business partner had taken a trip out to the land that he claimed he and Jared had argued over. It turned out it was a haven for old growth ginseng, which could bring in a lot of money if it was harvested and sold. The whole area was worth more than twenty million dollars, and Sherlock found their motive.

However, when they approached the business partner about it, he admitted to trying to screw Jared out of his share. He had paid Butch to kill Jared, but had no idea what happened after that. They insinuated that he’d hired a second killer, when he realized that Butch and Jared were conspiring, but he denied it.

It turned out his claim was legitimate. He turned over evidence that supported his claim that all he knew about was trying to hire Butch. They returned to Roxanne, Butch’s girlfriend, because of posters found at the crime scene. They were posters for the bands she would promo for a label she worked for. She had a life insurance policy on Butch, and would have had motive to kill him, and would have found the perfect, quiet places to do it. She claimed, however, that all the places she put up posters had been places Butch went with her. They had no proof, and she didn’t do anything.

Moreland broke into Sherlock and Joan’s home looking for a mysterious “item.” He was super creepy, and obviously startled Joan. It was clear he was looking for evidence, probably because the mole was right and he really was onto them. After a tense meeting, he left empty handed.

Roxanne set her and Butch’s house in fire, and the authorities responded. She was upset because she’d received a call about a condo in Tahiti and believed that Butch was going to ditch her after getting money from his scheme with Jared to fake Jared’s death. She thought he was going to move out there without her, and though she didn’t kill him, she wanted to hurt him by burning down their home. Sherlock, however, realized that it wasn’t Butch that had bought the condo.

Jared had bought the condo, with every intention of running out on his wife once his and Butch’s schemes were complete. Butch had been doing the footwork for Jared so as not to attract the attention of Jared’s wife. It ended up being that the wife was brought in for question, as it turned out she was the actual killer.

How did Sherlock figure it out? Because of the broken diamond that had been at the crime scene; the same diamond from the wedding ring Jared’s wife claimed to have pawned because they were going broke over the properties that weren’t making money.

She came upon the two faking Jared’s death and killed them both out of revenge. She staged the scene to look like a car jacking, all because he was going to leave her and she refused to let that happen.

At the end of the episode, Detective Bell responded to a robbery gone wrong. There had been a shootout at a diner and as they checked out the victims, a familiar face appeared. The mole that Joan had enlisted to spy on Moreland Holmes lay dead, shot in the diner. RIP dude.